Jimmy Kimmel punks people with fake bands at SXSW (again!)

SXSW is allegedly an industry conference for music biz insiders, but over the past decade or so it’s ballooned into a giant, corporate clusterfuck of street accordionists, hangers on, and bros and woo girls interested solely in collecting as many free drinks and blurry Instagram pics as they can before they barf, like an even more boring version of “Zelda.” This is not necessarily a bad thing; it lends the proceedings a certain dystopian charm, and it also ensures an endless stream of oblivous bullshitters ripe for pranking by Jimmy Kimmel’s best segment, Lie Witness News.

In this sequel to last year’s SXSW edition, the interviewer asks bright eyed young music experts their opinions on made up acts like Mary Kate and Nasty, Cheese Wiz Khalifa, and DJ Gluten (“a lot of people say he’s hard to tolerate”), then films them falling all over themselves to pretend they’re in the know about said acts. I especially enjoyed the one girl’s assertion that yes, she saw the frontman of Vlad and the Putins’ shirtless horseback entrance, and another’s invented back story of how she saw DJ Fake Chanel perform his hit “Je Suis Full of Merde” in Lyon. (Although to be fair, these people are probably all on Molly.)

The best moment, though, comes when our stoner friend at the end uses his alleged love of “So Much Marijuana” to turn it into his own PSA for legalization “in Texas and all fifty states.” It just goes to show: The message is stronger than the medium, even when you’re being punk’d.